NBA legend and Alabama native son Charles Barkley turned out at a Birmingham rally for Democrat Doug Jones on Monday in the last hours before the special election for a U.S. Senate seat, urging voters to stop looking stupid.
Barkley said he was “embarrassed” by GOP candidate Roy Moore, whom Barkley branded a “white separatist.”
Barkley — who appeared with Emmy winner Uzo Aduba of “Orange Is the New Black” and Mayor Randall Woodfin — said he was stunned the race was even close. “If somebody told you guys, ’Put this election in a movie script’ ... you would throw it in the trash. You’d say there’s no way possible this other dude [Moore] could be leading in any polls.”
He lashed Moore for “playing to that base, the same people been holding us back for many, many years.”
“At some point we got to stop looking like idiots to the nation,” Barkley added. “I love Alabama, but at some point we got to draw a line in the sand and show we’re not a bunch of damn idiots.”
Barkley told AL.com before the rally: ”It can’t be Roy Moore. This is unbelievable to me. You couldn’t make it up.”
He said Alabama voters supporting Moore are “brainwashed.”
“All you have to do is talk about God and say you don’t like homosexuals … and abortion,” Barkley said. “People are calling me, saying, ‘Really Charles? Really?’ I’m embarrassed by it.”
Even before accusations of sexual misconduct emerged, Moore should have been disqualified for being a “white separatist,” he told NBC. “How can you be a white separatist and represent” everyone in the state? he asked
“It has nothing to do about being Republican or Democrat; it’s about doing the right thing,” Barkley added. “You can’t have a guy running for political office who’s a white separatist, plain and simple. That’s immoral and wrong.”
Barkley has considered running for Alabama governor, both as a Republican and a Democrat.